Kron witness Grigory Rodchenkow has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being directly involved in the state doping scandal:”Of course it came from the top, from the president,”Rodchenkow said in a telephone interview with the ARD’s doping editorial team. Putin could “not deny”that he knew about the plan.
The whistleblower, who fled to the USA and was once head of the Moscow doping control laboratory and mastermind behind the doping scandal surrounding the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, is convinced that Putin was informed of all the details by Witali Mutko, then Sports Minister and now Deputy Premier,”He knew everything because it was a very simple chain:” I reported Red.), Nagornoch reported Mutko, Mutko reported Putin.”
Rodchenkov also confirmed that there had already been a state-organised doping system in Russia for the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing and 2012 in London. For 2014 in Sochi, he said, the state doping was then perfected.
Rodchenkov, who escaped from Russia at the end of 2015, is currently in the FBI’s witness protection program. Russia is looking for him with an international arrest warrant:”I enjoy every new day I live on,”he said in the interview in which he has been heard for the first time since he was granted FBI protection.
Putin’s participation in the investigation has not yet been proven. Neither Richard McLaren, the Special Investigator of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), nor the Commissions of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which dealt with the Russia scandal, were able to establish a link with the President of the Republic. McLaren and the IOC see it as proven that the Ministry of Sport has been involved. Mutko and Nagornich received a lifelong Olympic suspension.
Dick Pound, WADA’s founding president and longest-serving IOC member, attacked IOC president Thomas Bach in the ARD documentary in connection with the handling of the Russian scandal before the 2016 Summer Games in Rio, where a Russian team was allowed to start in spite of everything. There was “no room for serious discussion or opposition”in the IOC.
The risk is that you’ll become an enemy of the state. He is not flexible in accepting deviating and possibly critical comments and suggestions,”the Canadian said.
Pound is convinced that Russia has been given preferential treatment as a result of the state doping scandal surrounding Sochi before the summer games in Rio “I think if all this had happened elsewhere, we would say: Guatemala – you know the answer: Guatemala would be out. There’s no question about it,”said Pound, who, however, had agreed to Bach’s Russian course in an IOC vote in Rio.